


Retirement

by Northofthewall



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 01:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10753659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northofthewall/pseuds/Northofthewall
Summary: Jack often wondered if Sam knew the meaning of the word retirement. He'd always assumed she understood it's function, having watched him excel at it for so many years.





	Retirement

Jack often wondered if Sam knew the meaning of the word retirement. He'd always assumed she understood it's function, having watched him excel at it for so many years. She'd even insisted on taking early retirement so it wasn't as if she was resistant to the idea. Yet it had been exactly a year now and she definitely wasn't grasping the concept. 

"It's your anniversary," he said over breakfast.  
She looked deep in thought, sipping her coffee, which wasn't an unusual state for her to be in. She didn't appear to have heard him. That also wasn't too unusual. She paid attention when it was important. It was probably self defence. 

Two minutes later it had filtered in. "Anniversary?"  
She looked over at him.  
"Your glorious retirement."  
"Oh that."  
"It just occurred to me."  
"A year," she mused.  
She didn't share whatever thoughts she may have on the matter, which was likely quite a few. His tried and tested method of getting her to tell him what she was thinking was to talk rubbish until she got sick of it and gave in. So he carried on talking.  
"Maybe we should do something to celebrate?" he said.  
He tried to sound as casual as he could, and got up to wash his cup and plate.  
"Like what?"  
"Oh I dunno. The usual?"

Sam always had to specifically ask him if she wanted anything. A vacation. A footrub. A night out. Something different in bed. Jack really wasn't the kind of guy to come up with things on his own. He'd be happy going along with the status quo forever. Mind you, he was more than happy to oblige her requests, once she'd got used to asking him. 

She gave him a suspicious look over her overly large coffee cup.  
"Which usual is that?"  
He turned to her with one of his rare grins.  
"The Jack O'Neill 'night of pleasure' experience."  
She laughed, which was the desired result.  
"I don't think either of us has the stamina for that anymore Jack."  
"Maybe not but it'd be fun trying."  
He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. It may have seemed like a cliched joke but an eyebrow waggle was serious business, and she knew it.  
"So that's tonight planned. What about today? I do have to quickly check my uploads have worked but after that I'm free if you want to do something?"

She'd ruined the entire point of a cabin by installing an Asgard tech based transceiver with special 'Carter boosting' on it so she could get something called 'bandwidth', thereby allowing her to work on her computers instead of, you know, laying about and stuff. He'd refused point blank to have more than one computer in the cabin. Well, refused was the wrong word to use... It was more accurate to say that he'd less than cautiously suggested it ruined his carefully constructed haven of tranquility. So like all healthy couples, they'd argued, had fun making up, and then compromised. He built (with some assistance) a little laboratory workshop thing she could have all the computers she wanted in, along with whatever else she liked that flashed and beeped and gave him headaches. 

"Fishing?" he suggested, lining up the (very) long running joke that had stopped being funny years ago, if it ever even was.  
"Didn't you do that yesterday?"  
"Yeah but I didn't catch anything."  
His heart wasn't really in the delivery. They needed some new material. When he looked over she was doing that thinking thing again.  
"Hmm, fancy getting away for a few days?" she asked.  
"Bike or truck?"  
"Bike."  
She'd replied as if his question had been dumb. Which of course it was. 

He'd built her a garage for her bikes years ago, (one bike in bits, one for riding, at least that was the idea), and she'd taken a great deal of pleasure in helping him buy one so they could go on rides together and didn't have to fight anymore over who rode back warmer like a girl. It was also another place she could escape to for tinkering time, predictably about five minutes before she became exasperated with him. 

He finished washing up and started drying.  
"Ok where?" he asked.  
He was really hoping she'd have an idea because his suggestions were usually wrong.  
"Dunno. North?"  
"The 71, and then Canada?"  
"We can make it up as we go along."  
That sentence was proof she'd at least learnt something from years of being with him, and he smiled to himself. 

It hadn't been easy at first. She didn't understand that he could be happy doing nothing for hours and days and weeks on end. He'd questioned what she thought he'd been doing all this time. He didn't understand why she couldn't just stop and relax. He was the kind of guy that had always been happy being alone and quiet, and retirement felt like a prize he'd earned after a life of people shooting at him. Sam didn't see it like that. She had to be busy. She had to have at least three problems going around in her head at all times, even if that meant inventing them, and the only way she could switch her mind off was to do things in her garage that resulted in her getting grease in her hair. Either that or taking her bike out. A trip was always good for her. 

"I can bring my camera," he said.  
He put the plate and cup away in the cupboards he hoped they belonged.  
"Good idea. Just promise me you won't take photos of the road kill this time."  
"It was the flattest squirrel I'd ever seen!"  
Well it was. 

Sam's tech obsession was beneficial in some ways, he was forced to admit. She downloaded lots of music he could listen to and bought him a gadget he could read books on so he didn't have to clutter up the tiny cabin with books he'd only read once, or often just half. One of the things he'd got into since retiring was photography. Despite his highly artistic mom, he'd never thought of himself as creative (making faces out of his food aside), but Sam had got him a fancy camera to play with for his birthday one year and he'd taken to it. He was proud of himself for learning how to put them on the computer and even use photoshop, (which he frequently reminded Sam she knew very little about).

"I'm not camping, by the way," she said.  
Her tone suggested it was non-negotiable. He came back to sit down at the table.  
"Why would you think I'd want to camp?"  
"I dunno. You like camping sometimes don't you?"  
"Not in the fall! Roughing it is for young fools and the military."  
There was camping and then there was camping, and Jack had long since had enough of cold, uncomfortable nights under canvas.  
"Good. We can pack lighter that way anyway."

Jack had (for some reason) expected living with Sam would come with an array of candles and cushions and knick knacks that he assumed all women had to have around them. When it didn't happen he at least expected it when she retired and had to spend more time at their cabin. That wasn't Sam though. If she had her way, the cabin would be sparse and functional. She'd made him get rid of some tatty stuff of his grandparents that was well past it's best, (who wasn't a fan of taxidermy?) and a couple of pieces of furniture had to be replaced because apparently sixty odd years was too old for a couch, but definitely not too old for a person she'd reminded him. The aging bed had given up the ghost and needed replacing after only a year together, a titbit which Jack was often happy to share with people. 

"We should leave as soon as possible and get some miles under our belts," he said. He was already thinking about various towns and their provision for accommodation, or lack thereof. It was unfortunate that he'd never been able to completely rid himself of the need to prepare for trips as if they were missions. Thankfully Sam didn't have any issue with it. She was even worse than he was and approached packing like a Boy Scout with OCD.  
"Agreed. So you don't have any plans for the next few days?"  
She smirked at him knowingly.  
"Well I'll have to record the Simpsons."  
His irritation was clearly put on.  
"Naturally."

The thing about Sam he loved so much (aside from those legs, and that smile, and a million other things he could easily list), was how she took him as he came. She never tried to change him, despite there being plenty he thought could be improved upon. She'd complain about his bad habits sometimes of course, and more so now she was around him all the time, and there'd be things about him she never really understood, like his Simpsons obsession, but she still accepted it. He accepted that she accepted it, even though he didn't really understand why she was with him in the first place. She was also the only person he'd ever met (aside from Charlie), who genuinely liked his stupid jokes. 

"What about you?" he asked. "What if there's a physics emergency?"  
He gave her one of his patented 'I'm being completely serious... honest' expressions and she pulled a face at him.  
"They can beam me from anywhere you know. Although they better not."

That damn beaming thing was a nuisance too. Despite having retired she was constantly getting called away to consult on some urgent matter. He teased her about it sometimes, but not too often because he knew it was always life or death important. It had surprised him just how often that could come in a single year, but he put up with it because he knew she secretly loved it and he couldn't exactly stop her from saving the world again could he? He'd lost count years ago of how many times she'd saved the world, which was a shame coz he fancied having a tally somewhere. 

"I think they learnt their lesson after the 'in flagrante' dock incident," he said.  
He smirked at the memory and she blushed. He liked that he could still get her to blush.  
"That reminds me. We're taking a blanket this time."  
"But you look so cute with leaves in your hair."  
"No."  
She shook her head and tried not to smile.

Jack's only mission in life now was to get through the day without screwing his knee, and to make Sam's life as happy as possible. The latter wasn't too hard. He had three jobs. Stay out of her lab. Do half of the chores. And satisfy her in the bedroom. He prided himself on being excellent at all three. 

"It take it the bikes are ready to go?" he asked.  
She'd never been good at hiding her emotions from him so he could read the guilt all over her face.  
"Um. Just give me twenty minutes in the garage. They'll be ready."  
"What did you do this time?"  
"Nothing."  
He gave her a mocking look.  
"Sure, sure."

He'd learnt never to ask her "but what's the point of that?" or "why the hell did you take it apart again?" He'd also learnt she liked baths only when she was feeling under the weather, and hated his shoulder massages, although she did like giving them. She liked morning sex and evening foot rubs. She de-stressed by taking her bike out and sometimes by just watching him fish. She liked him to waffle to her about rubbish in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep, and she appreciated it when he made stupid jokes to distract her from whatever it was that she was worrying about. She never needed him to tell her she was beautiful but he did it daily anyway. All he needed from her was for her to stick around, and she had.

"Are you happy Sam?"  
The words had popped out before he could stop them, and now they were out there, all he could do was look at her as if he'd meant to ask.  
She opened her mouth to give an instant affirmative but stopped to consider his face. Then she smiled that smile, and it told him everything before she'd even replied. She reached across the table and grabbed his hand.  
"Yes Jack, this is working for me just fine."


End file.
